The Hakawati (35 page)

Her iniquitous brother stole her honor on her fourteenth birthday. He impressed himself upon her in her chambers. As soon as her handmaidens heard her shrieks, they rushed to her rescue, only to be slain by his sword. When the foul Arbusto left, his sister crawled to the butchered corpses of her friends and covered her hands in their stillwarm blood.

“The sacrifices you have offered will never be in vain,” she said. “We will walk the Garden together.” She stabbed her heart with a dagger.

In the morning, the girl’s mother wailed, “I have lost two children to
the night.” The king ordered Arbusto’s arrest, but none could find him. He sailed to Cairo, and used his scholarship and cunning to masquerade as a learned Muslim.

Arbusto became King Saleh’s judge, and the king relied on his counsel.

Arbusto’s heart filled with hatred and scorn when he saw Baybars in his new suit standing at the diwan’s door as the prince of protocol. He wrote a letter to a man by the name of Azkoul, a malicious soul who delighted in murder, massacre, and mayhem. “As soon as you finish reading this note,” it said, “you should be riding toward Cairo. Come to the diwan, and the man who asks what it is you need is the one I want not breathing. Tell him you have a proposal for the diwan, and offer him a folded piece of paper. When he turns his back to you, strike him dead. I will ensure that you are not punished.” Azkoul flushed with joy at the prospect of a killing.

At the court, Prince Baybars received the paper from Azkoul and turned his back to open the diwan’s door. Azkoul took out his sword and raised it to strike. As Baybars swung the doors open, Azkoul’s bloodied head rolled into the diwan, and his body collapsed behind the prince.

“What manner of murder is this?” bellowed the king’s judge. “How can the prince of protocol kill a seeker of the diwan?”

Two men entered the diwan and bowed before the king. “No one but us killed the seeker,” the fierce Uzbeks confessed. To an astonished council they relayed the story. “The man is named Azkoul; he is an infamous killer. We saw him enter the city and recognized him. We trailed him, knowing that where he travels treachery follows. We saw him raise his sword to kill the prince, who had his back turned, and we struck, cutting a cankerous blight from a devout world.”

And the king said, “Justice prevails again.”

Baybars thanked the Uzbeks for saving his life and invited them to be his guests. The Uzbeks rode with Baybars out of the palace. When they arrived at Najem’s, they asked if this was his home, and the prince replied that it belonged to his uncle. Baybars could not own a house, since he himself was owned. “But that is not true,” one of the Uzbeks said. “We will present our case to the king tomorrow.”

In the morning, the prince and the fighters knelt before the king.
The Uzbeks said, “Your Majesty, Prince Baybars is not a slave. He is naught but a son of kings. We have proof of his history and his genealogy.”

The king said, “I would like to hear about Prince Baybars. How did he come about? Who is he? What happened? Tell me his story.”

My grandfather died in April 1973. I had just gotten home from school when Aunt Samia’s panicked Filipina maid called on my mother, saying that my grandfather, who was visiting his daughter, wasn’t doing well. My mother ran up the stairs in her housedress and clogs.

My grandfather lay shivering on the couch, Aunt Samia on her knees before him. She shivered as well, but it was an altogether different kind. “I don’t understand,” she said. “What can I do?” My grandfather clutched his chest with his right hand. When Aunt Samia saw my mother, she begged, “Help me, please.” My mother knelt beside my aunt. Shoulder to shoulder, they seemed to be praying before my grandfather, the altar. I was the only witness.

“His heart,” my aunt said. She had called an ambulance. “He wants to know his name.” Her voice sounded like cheap plastic. “He doesn’t know who he is?”

My grandfather had trouble breathing. He shook his head. “No,” he uttered.

“Hold on, Father,” Aunt Samia said. “Help is on the way.”

“Your name is Ismail al-Kharrat,” my mother said.

“We know you,” Aunt Samia said. “You’ll be fine. We know who you are.”

His eyelids fluttered; his eyes seemed to scream in pain. “He doesn’t know my name.”

“Who doesn’t?” my mother asked. “Osama? He knows your name. We all do.”

“No,” he said. “He knows not.” His tremors subsided.

“Calm down, Father,” Aunt Samia said. “Just breathe. In, out. Don’t worry.”

And he shook again, an unearthly quiver. “No.” His hand tightened.

Aunt Samia whimpered. My mother teared. “He knows your name,” she said. “He always knew your name.”

“No,” he said. “He knows not my name.”

“Say your name,” my mother said. “Whisper in my ears and He will hear it.” Aunt Samia stared at my mother. She grasped her arm. “In my ears,” my mother said. “From mine to His.”

She moved her head to my grandfather’s lips. And my grandfather spoke.

“The Saviour knows your name,” my mother said. “He knows.”

The paramedics arrived five minutes later. They rolled him on the gurney into the elevator. “You drive.” Aunt Samia handed my mother the keys. “You’ll get us there before they do.” They trampled down the stairs. The clamor of my mother’s clogs slapping the stone echoed off the walls. He died on the way.

I knew his names. I knew his story.

My mother didn’t want me to attend his funeral. I was too young, she insisted. I’d be scarred. At first, my father agreed with her. I would attend the consolations but not the burial.

But then Aunt Samia had a fit. And Uncle Wajih had a fit. And Uncle Halim had a fit. I was twelve, a man, and this was family. I became the cutoff: any cousin older than I was (Anwar, Hafez) would attend; younger ones (Munir, etc.) wouldn’t.

My mother wept continuously and didn’t leave her room. By early evening, when the rest of the family and guests began to stream in, she was called out. She wore mourning black, which accentuated the redness of her puffy eyes. Upon seeing her, Aunt Nazek bellowed, “Look. Look and see the grief your leaving has caused.” Aunt Samia beat her chest and yelled, “Why, Father, why? Why did you leave me?”

My father’s cousins, the Arisseddines, took over logistics. They began to send their children out with the death announcement to all the Druze villages. They seemed so efficient and meticulous. The sons of Jalal Arisseddine divvied up the important families, government officials, and parliamentarians. The sons of my father’s uncle Ma
an divided up the villages and the religious communities. Every time my father approached his cousins, he forgot what he was about to say, and was led back to his chair by Lina, who didn’t leave his side. He seemed shrouded in fog. The Arisseddine women greeted arriving mourners and guided them toward the family. They moved chairs from Uncle Jihad’s apartment into ours. Cups of coffee were in constant rotation.

My mother seemed lost and despondent. She slumped in her chair,
back bent, head down, staring at her shoes. More of the ladies cried, and Aunt Samia wailed. The wail woke my mother up. She stood up straight, looked at me, then at Lina across the room, next to my father. She arched her eyebrows when she caught Lina’s eye. My mother wiped her mouth, and Lina took out a tissue and wiped her lipstick off hers. My mother walked over to my father and began whispering in his ear. He nodded once, twice. He shook his head no. He nodded again. And life revisited his face.

It wasn’t an accident that Aladdin was Chinese.

“Once, a long, long time ago, in the land of China,” my grandfather used to start his tale, “there was a mischievous boy called Ala
eddine.”

“Why China?” I would ask.

“The Druze and the Chinese are related,” he would reply.

I didn’t look Chinese. I once asked my father if it was true, and he dismissed it as one of my grandfather’s ramblings. So did my mother. “Well, you see,” my grandfather had said, “the Druze believe that when someone dies the soul instantly jumps into the body of a baby being born. So we’re supposed to be able to figure out who was reincarnated into whom. There aren’t that many Druze. The wise men of the Druze, and you know they’re not that wise, realized there was a problem. A Druze would die, and there’d be no one who was born at that same instant. They had to be born somewhere, you see. The dead were sometimes born in China, the land of a thousand dawns. The Chinese believe in reincarnation, which could mean they’re related to the Druze. And, most important, China is far enough away so that no one can check. The Chinese get born over here, and we’re reborn in China.”

When I repeated that to my mother, she thought it was ridiculous.

Yet, as we sat in the living room the day my grandfather died, Ghassan Arisseddine, one of my father’s older cousins, announced quietly to the room, “Lucky are the gentle people in China for receiving you in their midst at this hour.” Neither my mother nor my father flinched.

The family met at eight in the morning to accompany the coffin from the morgue to the village, to the bey’s mansion, where the funeral was being held. The hearse led a motorcade of thirty cars on an agonizingly slow drive up the mountain.

I sat behind my mother in our car—an unhurried, hushed, uphill
ride. At a donkey’s pace, the journey’s markers strolled by unfamiliarly, the orange orchard, the three banana groves in a row, the unmarked turnoff, the protruding rock that looked like a detrunked elephant. The lush blue shore that should have danced only shimmied. The change from the green of pines to that of oaks took longer; the shades of ocher lingered, imprinted strange blends onto my retinas.

My mother broke the silence once. “It’s not a good idea to have an open casket.”

My father guided me toward a pavilion where the men gathered. Hundreds of white plastic chairs were set in rows facing another row of chairs with faded russet cushions. The bey, his brother, and his two sons approached our family; all exchanged kisses and condolences. My father had told me to reply with “May you be compensated with your health” to anything that was said to me. There was discussion and insincere protestation about seating arrangements. As the eldest male, Uncle Wajih had the main seat, and the bey sat next to him. Uncle Jihad took the end chair, and I the next one. My father maneuvered himself next to me. The bey’s brother ran up to my father and offered to exchange seats. My father begged off. “I’m sure the seating will be rearranged when others begin to arrive.”

And we sat in silence. My father didn’t bat an eyelash. He gazed at the rows of empty chairs facing him. Uncle Jihad stared to his right, down the hill, at the undulating olive orchards beneath us. A damp, cold gust brushed and licked my face. Uncle Jihad pulled his jacket across his chest. He wept silently. My father didn’t. “Are you warm enough?” Uncle Jihad asked me.

As if planned and coordinated, the residents of three villages arrived at the same time. The men and women separated at the gate of the bey’s mansion and marched up the delicate incline. The women nodded toward us as they ambled by. Before us, the men arranged themselves in a line, whose order, who stood where and next to whom, seemed predetermined. They covered their hearts with the palms of their hands, uttered in unison something I couldn’t understand. My father and uncle and all the men in our line made the same gesture and replied in a different incomprehensible sentence. Their line snaked toward ours; their hands shook our hands. Most of the men kissed the bey’s hand.